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Lauren Bay Regula on Strength, Depression & Real Habits

Lauren Bay Regula on Strength, Depression, and the “Boringly Beautiful” Habits That Actually Change Your Life

In this episode of the Beyond the Box Nutrition podcast, we sat down with three-time Olympian and co-founder of Strong Moms, Lauren Bay Regula — pitcher, coach, and one of the most refreshingly honest voices in women’s health. Lauren talks openly about climbing back from depression, building real strength across body, mind, and emotions, and why the unsexy basics are the only thing that ever actually works. If you’re a woman in midlife who’s tried everything and still feels like your body and brain aren’t cooperating, this conversation will land.

From Two-Time Olympian to Depression — and Back Again

Most people know Lauren as the pitcher who represented Canada at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, then made an against-all-odds comeback to win bronze in Tokyo. What they don’t always know is the gap between those medals — the years where she was, in her own words, passively suicidal, lying to her therapist for the first three sessions, and going days without speaking to her own husband.

She didn’t get there because she was weak. She got there because she was the kind of person who was used to white-knuckling her way through everything. Athlete brain. “I’ve got it” brain. The exact same brain a lot of us in midlife are running on while we juggle careers, kids, aging parents, hormones, and a body that suddenly doesn’t respond to what used to work.

What changed wasn’t a single breakthrough. It was a slow, stubborn willingness to stop performing wellness and start actually living it — therapy, a husband who refused to let her disappear, and eventually a coaching practice built on everything she learned the hard way.

The Health Triangle: Why Just “Eat Better and Work Out” Falls Flat

One of the most useful frameworks Lauren shared is what she calls the Health Triangle — physical, mental, and emotional strength, all feeding each other. Most coaching programs only address the first one. Most women in midlife are quietly drowning in the other two.

She described moms who came in with picture-perfect workout routines but whose self-talk was savage, and others who’d never lifted a weight but were logistical wizards holding entire families together. And then there are the ones carrying so much emotional weight — caregiving, grief, decades of suppressed everything — that asking them to “just hit the gym” is laughable. Lauren shared that some of her clients spent a full year just clearing emotional bandwidth before they had the brain space to think about food and movement at all. Two years in, they were down 30 pounds. The “slow” path was the only one that was ever going to work.

This is exactly the pattern we see at BTBN with women in perimenopause. You don’t have a discipline problem. You have a capacity problem. And no amount of meal prep is going to fix what’s actually a sleep, stress, hormone, or unprocessed-life problem.

“You’re not ‘bad at discipline.’ You’re exhausted, overcommitted, and your cortisol is screaming. Let’s address that.”

The “Boringly Beautiful” Basics

When Sheena asked Lauren what’s most overcomplicated in the health and nutrition world right now, she didn’t hesitate: all of it. Her answer came from a story about her third Olympic team, where the catcher stood up before Tokyo and told them the team standing on the podium would be the one that did the basic things best.

That phrase — boringly beautiful — has become a mantra inside Strong Moms, and it’s one we wish more women in midlife heard. Squat. Hinge. Push. Pull. Eat enough protein. Move your body in ways your joints can keep doing for the next forty years. Sleep. Walk. Repeat. The reason it doesn’t sell as well as the trendy stuff is exactly the reason it works.

Lauren put it bluntly: her old nutrition coach used to ask her, do you want results or do you want to be entertained? Most of us, if we’re honest, have been chasing entertainment. The keto thing. The 75 Hard thing. The new fancy class. Meanwhile the actual needle-movers — strength training, real food, consistent sleep, stress management — sit there waiting for us to come back.

Identity Over Action: Why You Can’t Fail at Being Yourself

Lauren is a James Clear devotee, and one of the threads she kept pulling on was the difference between starting an action and becoming an identity. Anyone can start a workout program. Anyone can stop one. But if you build the identity of “I’m an active person” or “I’m a healthy eater,” you can hit the rumble strips and find your way back, because you can’t fail at being yourself.

This matters enormously for women in perimenopause, because most of us have been on and off plans for thirty years. Every “restart” reinforces the story that we’re someone who can’t stick to things. Lauren’s reframe — that you’re not failing, you just paused — is a small but seismic shift. It’s the difference between shame spiraling on day three and walking back onto the path on day four.

She also makes the case that this is why crash diets and 30-day challenges keep failing women. The novelty wears off, and all the original reasons you reached for the wine or the ice cream are still sitting there, untouched. You didn’t change identities. You just rented one for a month.

Brain Dumps, Therapy, and Learning to Ask for Help

Lauren’s emotional toolkit isn’t fancy. It’s a daily gratitude practice (sometimes the answer is “toilet paper”), a brain dump on paper, and therapy when she needs it. The brain dump is one we’d recommend to every client we’ve ever worked with: get it all out on paper, then circle what you can actually control. Burn the rest if you need to.

But the piece of this conversation that sat with us longest was Lauren talking about how her depression got worse because she wouldn’t ask Dave for help. She’d convinced herself she was protecting him. She was actually robbing him of the chance to show up for her — and robbing herself of the relief of not carrying it alone.

“When you find your people, they’re not going to think you’re taking from them. It’s I want to help you. And then when the roles reverse, like I want to help you too. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

For women in midlife who pride themselves on handling everything, this hits hard. The flex isn’t doing it all alone. The flex is letting the people who love you actually love you.

You’re Irreplaceable Everywhere But Home

Toward the end of the conversation, Lauren dropped a line that genuinely changed the temperature in the room: you’re irreplaceable everywhere but your home. Your job can be done by someone else. Your committee role can be done by someone else. Your body, your presence, your attention with the people you actually love — that one’s just you.

The point isn’t to feel guilty about work or about the things you take on outside the house. The point is permission. Permission to say no. Permission to take the forty-five minutes for a workout that makes you a better human for the rest of the day. Permission to stop confusing quantity of time with quality of presence.

This reframe is one of the most useful things we’ve heard for the perimenopausal woman who’s been told her whole life that taking care of herself is selfish. It’s not. It’s the most strategic thing you can do.

What This Means for You

  • Stop trying to fix the physical first if your emotional and mental tank is empty. Walking, sleep, and one workout a week is a foundation. You don’t need to wake up at 4 a.m. to win.
  • Embrace the boringly beautiful. Squat, hinge, push, pull. Protein at every meal. Repeat for the rest of your life. The basics are the strategy.
  • Build the identity, not just the habit. “I’m someone who moves my body” survives a bad week. “I started a workout plan” doesn’t.
  • Get the thoughts out of your head and onto paper. Daily brain dump, circle what you can control, let the rest go. Your nervous system will thank you.
  • Ask for help. Out loud. To a real person. Whether that’s a partner, a friend, a therapist, or a coach. You don’t get bonus points for suffering quietly.

Ready to Stop Doing This Alone?

If anything in this conversation hit close to home — the exhaustion, the cycle of starting over, the feeling that you’re working harder than ever and getting less in return — we’d love to talk. At Beyond the Box Nutrition, we coach women in perimenopause and midlife through the boringly beautiful basics that actually change how you feel in your body. No quick fixes. No shame. Just real coaching that meets you where you are.

Book a free consult with us here and let’s figure out what your next 1% better looks like.

Ready to stop starting over and start building something that lasts?

We work with women who are done white-knuckling plans that don’t fit their real lives. Nutrition and fitness support built around your actual body, your actual schedule, and where you actually are right now. Let’s talk.

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